Into the Light

by David Weber

  “You don’t have to kill yourself.” Sharon’s tone was almost pleading. “It’s not like you’re the only person he could ask! Hell, Dave—most of the North Carolina University system survived! You’re telling me that with all of that available, you’re the one guy he needs? I mean, I love you, and I think you’re pretty darned smart, but really? And he needs you right now—can’t even wait the couple of months Hosea says it’ll take to finish fixing your shoulder?”

  Her fury was obvious to him … and so were the real reasons for it.

  “There are a lot of other ‘guys’ available to him,” he said. “And, frankly, I think a lot of them are a lot smarter than me. But he trusts me. Maybe just as importantly, Pieter and Longbow—and Vlad—trust me. It’s likely to take a while for them to start trusting anyone else as much as they already trust me.”

  “So what?” She glared at him. “The one thing we’ve got is time, Dave! Given how long it takes to get from star to star, it’ll be centuries before anybody else from the Hegemony—” her lips twisted with disgust as she used the term “—gets here to see what the Shongairi did to us. Or to do anything else to us, for that matter.”

  “It’ll probably be centuries,” he corrected gently. “I’ll even give you that we almost certainly have centuries, but we can’t guarantee that. Besides, the Hegemony’s not who I’m worried about. Not right now, anyway.”

  Her blue eyes narrowed, and she cocked her head with a questioning expression he’d learned to recognize over the years.

  “Right this minute, Howell has a monopoly on the tech base Vlad left behind, and I trust him,” he said. “Matter of fact, he’s one of the very few people I would trust with that kind of lever. And with Longbow and Pieter and the other vampires looking over his shoulder, I doubt he’s likely to succumb to any latent delusions of Godhead. But there’s an entire planet out there, and most of it—especially the developed ‘most of it’—has been shot to hell. Best estimate right now, we’re down to maybe—maybe—a quarter of the planetary population we had this time last year. Think about that. I know you understand—we all understand—what that means in human terms, in terms of dead parents and children and learning to live with all the holes it’s torn in our lives. But it also means virtually every government in the world’s been destroyed or at least mortally wounded and left for dead. Now that the teams are starting to spread out, I’m beginning to realize—really realize, I mean—what an unbelievable job Howell did of maintaining order and stability here in North Carolina, even if he did have to pretend to collaborate with the Puppies to pull it off.

  “Most of the rest of the world wasn’t that lucky, Honey.”

  He shook his head, his eyes haunted as his memory replayed the recon images Judson Howell had relayed directly to his contact lenses courtesy of that “phone” attached to his belt. He hadn’t shared those with Sharon, and he didn’t intend to unless she insisted. Better that only one of them should have those particular nightmares.

  “There are spots that had their own Howells,” he continued, “but they’re few and far between, and as nearly as we can tell, none of them managed it on the scale he did. North Carolina, southern Virginia, what’s left of South Carolina, and eastern Kentucky and Tennessee represent the biggest single organized unit of governance in the entire world. Think about that. In the entire world, Honey. Everything else is patchworks, bits and pieces—warlords here, county or state governments over there, self-organized communes somewhere else. The only places where central authority held up over big geographic distances were like rural Canada or Australia, where there weren’t any people. I mean, theoretically Canada’s still there, but its total population is no more than fifteen million or so, and that’s less than Howell has right here. And Brazil’s still technically intact, but the Federal government doesn’t really control anything outside the acting capital.

  “The world’s broken, Babe. Even before the Puppies, there were countries that were … dysfunctional, let’s say. Now?” He shook his head again. “Now there’s nothing but ‘dysfunction,’ once you get past the purely local level. Hell, as far as we can tell, aside from Representative Jeffers, none of our own senators or congressmen are even still alive! And I’m talking about ‘our’ in terms of the entire damned country. I’m sure there have to be at least some of them left, but we don’t know where they are, and even if we did know, Jeffers is right: Vlad left Howell in charge for a reason, and until we can start fixing all the broken places, nobody in his right mind wants to start screwing around with that.”

  “I know all that,” she said when he paused. “Oh, I haven’t been watching the data feeds he’s been sending you, and I don’t want to.” Her face was suddenly twenty years older. “I can’t hug all those babies, Dave. I can’t pick them up, feed them, find their moms and dads for them. And if they have faces, then I have to, and the fact that I can’t would just—”

  “I know.” He reached across the table, held out his hand, and she took it. “I know, Babe, believe me. And that’s part of the problem. I did look, and they do have faces, and there are thousands of almost-Howells out there who aren’t going to trust anybody outside their own little enclaves. People who forted up, dug in to defend themselves and theirs against all comers. Some of them would love to work with us, assuming they could really trust us. Others enjoy being in charge or are sure to figure their claim to the Puppies’ tech stash is just as good, just as legitimate, as Howell’s. They sure as hell won’t see any reason to leave him in charge of it instead of themselves, but somebody—some one body, for at least the foreseeable future—has to be in charge. Right now that’s Judson Howell, God help him, and somehow he has to convince all these people not just to let us help them survive but to come together and build a genuine world government.”

  “And how did that work out with the UN?” Sharon asked cynically. “You’re the historian—you and Malachi. So tell me again just how well that worked!”

  “It never worked because it was never intended to be a government,” he replied. “Howell’s not talking about a debating society, or a place to posture on the international stage for domestic consumption. He’s talking about a genuine government, one with the ability to make—and enforce—not just pious policy hopes but actual law anywhere on the face of the planet. A government that would supersede all other governments … including ours.”

  “You’re serious,” she said slowly, after a moment.

  “Dead serious.” Dvorak nodded. “I don’t know if even Howell can pull that one off, but I do know that if he can’t, nobody can, and we’ve got to do it. We’re one planet with maybe—maybe—a couple of billion people left on it, and from everything I can see from the limited amount of galactic history I’ve been able to look at so far, the Hegemony’s going to want all of us dead once it gets to know us better.”

  “What?” She stiffened in her chair, eyes wide, and he shrugged.

  “I’ve been looking for trends. Seventy-five thousand of their years—next best thing to a hundred and fifty thousand Earth years—of recorded history isn’t something you can just whip right through, even with a neural educator, but some things are pretty damned glaringly obvious, and one of them is that the Hegemony prizes ‘stability’ above almost anything else. That’s one reason they were willing to point the Shongairi in our direction. The Puppies were already destabilizing things, so the Hegemony figured it might as well use them to keep us from becoming a problem in the fullness of time. I have to wonder just what sort of contingency plans some of the older races might have been putting together to deal with the Shongairi in the long run, but in the meantime, they made a convenient hammer to deal with another pugnacious bunch of violent primitives. That would be us. But, I gotta tell you, Honey, I don’t think the Hegemony researched the problem carefully enough before they handed this over to Thikair and his people, because the Puppies were nothing compared to us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s obvious f
rom Thikair and Shairez’ notes and memos that nobody in the Hegemony expected us to be as technologically advanced as we were when they got here. Got back here, I should say; they paid us their first visit back in the fifteenth century. Honey, they expected us to just be getting around to inventing flintlocks and crude steam engines. The Shongairi are quite a bit more innovative than the Hegemony as a whole, and compared to us they’re the Mikado closing his borders to keep out dangerous foreign innovation. Once the rest of the Hegemony realizes humans aren’t big fans of stagnation, it’s going to decide we’re the Puppies on steroids, and I just can’t rid my mind of the possibility that they might be willing to burn down the house to get rid of the damned cockroaches.”

  “You mean they might come back to finish what the Puppies started,” she said.

  “No. I mean worse than that.” He met those beloved blue eyes levelly. “The Shongairi started out to enslave us, to channel our taste for innovation to support their own designs against the Hegemony. Thikair’s own memos make that clear enough. They only decided to wipe us out once they realized they’d never be able to conquer the planet and keep it conquered as long as there were still humans living on it. When they figured that out, they were perfectly willing to exterminate us … and figured the rest of the Hegemony would give them a pass on it. I’m not sure they were right about that, but I sort of suspect that if any of the other races had objected it would have been because they saw what happened to us as a club to use against the Shongairi, not because they really cared about a bunch of primitive, hairy monkey boys and girls on a planet in the back of beyond.

  “More to the point, I’m pretty damn sure that if the Hegemony catches up with Thikair’s evaluation of us and realizes how fundamentally … at odds with their basic matrix humanity and human nature really are, none of them’re going to be interested in just conquering us. From what I can see, the ‘older races’—who are almost all herbivores, as nearly as I can tell—have spent a lot of time looking down on the ‘murderous’ carnivorous Shongairi, but I doubt they’ll hesitate for a moment to swat us like mosquitoes once they realize how much worse we’re likely to destabilize things for them.

  “And that means that somehow we have to get big enough and nasty enough to make that impossible—or at least as difficult as hell, hopefully difficult enough they decide not to try it. And for that, we need a world government that works. One that can take the knowledge Vlad left behind for us, build on it, and present a united front to the Hegemony when we meet up with them again.”

  “And that’s why Howell wants you,” she said flatly. “Because you understand that. And because you’re so damned stubborn, so damned bullheaded, that you’ve just got to do something about it, don’t you?” She glared at him, those blue eyes gleaming with sudden tears. “Can’t just sit here and figure you’ve done enough, that you can take a few months—hell, maybe even a couple of years!—to spend with the people who love you and who thought they’d lost you when Rob brought you home more dead than alive. Damn you, Dave Dvorak! We love you. We need you and we—I—almost lost you!”

  “I know,” he said softly. “I know. And I love you, and I need you. But I can’t walk away from this. I just can’t! There are too few of us left, Honey. And way too many of the better paid thinkers and philosophers and diplomats are gone. Howell’s trying to put together a team that can hit the ground running, get this thing launched before somebody else starts trying to pull the wheel out of his hands. I’m not the best man in the world for the job—God knows I know that if anyone does! But he’s decided I’m the man he’s got, and I can’t just walk away. I can’t because I love you. Because I love the kids. Because somebody’s got to help him do it, and, God help me, it looks like one of those somebodies is me.”

  “But why you?”

  “Because he knows me—now, at least. And because he trusts me and knows Pieter and Longbow and the others trust me, too. And because he thinks I’m the best he’s got. But the real reason?” He squeezed her hand fiercely. “The real reason I’m taking this job is that I don’t trust anyone else to do what I know has to be done to keep you safe, and I will do anything—anything—to keep you and our kids safe. And they’re all ‘our kids’ now, Sharon. Every single one of them out there being hungry and afraid in the dark are our kids, and when the rest of the frigging Hegemony gets around to us again, our kids, and their kids, and their grandkids, are going to be ready to put a bullet right between its frigging eyes if that’s what it takes.”

  . IV .

  ST. JOHNSBURY, VERMONT,

  UNITED STATES

  The snowplow chugged along slowly, clearing a lane of two feet of the purest, whitest snow Abu Bakr bin Muhammed el-Hiri (Abu Bakr, son of Muhammed, the Wildcat) had ever seen. A native of New York City, his experience with snow was that it was white on its journey through the sky, but upon making contact with the ground, it immediately turned a shade of black darker than his own skin.

  He’d never seen this much unbroken white before in his life, and it almost made him forget the devastation of the war. Almost.

  Abu Bakr’s truck was at the front of the aid column which followed the snowplow north along Interstate 91 through Vermont. Although he’d spent plenty of time in New England during the war—and killed a number of the Shongairi while operating in Concord, New Hampshire, not too far away—that had been during warmer months. After an hour of nothing to see but the eternal blankness of snowfall, though, the desolation lost its thrill, and Abu Bakr’s mind began to wander as road hypnosis set in.

  “Well, here’s something you don’t see every day,” his driver remarked as he slowed the truck. “At least, not anymore.”

  Abu Bakr snapped out of the semiconscious haze he’d fallen into and scanned the area around them with the practiced eyes of an insurgent. “What?” he asked, after not finding any immediate threats.

  The driver chuckled at Abu Bakr’s reaction, but then indicated the off ramp to St. Johnsbury with a twitch of his chin. “The road’s plowed once you get past the off ramp,” the driver said. “First indication of civilization I’ve seen since we left I-89, what? About forty miles and two hours ago?”

  “Huh. Is that all it’s been?”

  “What do you want me to do?” the driver asked.

  “Call the plow and tell him to come back,” Abu Bakr replied. “Looks like someone put out the welcome mat; let’s go say hi.”

  The driver nodded, then waited as the plow came back and cleared the ramp. As the bladed vehicle reached Highway 5, Abu Bakr’s driver sped up, passed the plow, and headed into town.

  “Easy,” Abu Bakr cautioned. “Just because the welcome mat’s out, doesn’t mean it’s out for us. Let’s not race into something we’ll have to fight to get back out of again.”

  The driver throttled back to a more stately fifteen miles per hour, giving Abu Bakr a chance to survey his surroundings. Highway 5 ran alongside a set of train tracks that followed the western bank of the Passumpsic River. After about half a mile, he began to see the normal signs of pre-invasion civilization—light industry and a gas station. Although there were lights on in some of the buildings, it was impossible to tell if all of them were still functional, and no one came out to greet them. In fact, there was no one to be seen. If not for the plowed road and electric lights, Abu Bakr would have thought the area abandoned.

  “Want me to stop and check out some of the buildings?” the driver asked, his tone indicating he didn’t particularly want to go out into the cold Vermont late afternoon weather.

  “No, keep going,” Abu Bakr replied, motioning forward with his hand. He shuddered as a cold shiver ran down his spine. “This place is giving me the creeps. It feels like we’re being watched—closely—but I don’t see anyone doing it.”

  “Me, either,” the driver replied, his eyes jumping back and forth as if trying to take in everything at once.

  “Just take it nice and slow. I don’t think we’re in any danger, yet, but be ready
to stand on the gas if I say so.”

  They drove another tenth of a mile past several restaurants and the Chamber of Commerce, and were just entering St. Johnsbury proper when the driver slammed on the brakes and pointed to a man standing in the intersection of Highway 5 and Eastern Avenue. The man was dressed for the weather, with a long winter coat covering most of his figure and a winter stocking cap on his head. He also had both hands in his pockets, which looked big enough to hold a number of things Abu Bakr hoped the man wasn’t hiding.

  The driver turned to Abu Bakr, and the former insurgent noticed he didn’t volunteer to go out this time. Abu Bakr gave him a half smile. “Guess this one’s mine, huh?”

  The driver nodded as Abu Bakr buttoned up his coat and pulled on his gloves. “Be right back,” he added as he got out, shivering as a blast of freezing air immediately went down his neck and back.

  The man in the road simply waited, unmoving, as if unaffected by the cold, as Abu Bakr trudged over. The intersection was surrounded by four-story buildings on three sides, with what looked like small businesses on the ground floor and apartments on the upper floors, but there were no lights on in any of them.

  “Now, what’s this all about?” the man asked, nodding to the convoy, as Abu Bakr approached.

  “The aliens left, and we’re putting the country back together,” he replied.

  “So?”

  “So what?” Abu Bakr asked, shivering as another blast of the frigid wind found its way past his jacket.

  “So, what’s in it for us?” the man asked. “In case you haven’t noticed, we’re doing okay on our own. We’ve got water, power, and food, and we don’t rightly need a whole lot more than that. What are you offering to get us to join back up?”